A Samsung MFP that prints and yet does not

[submarine8]

I’m facing a weird problem with my Samsung MFP (SL-M2875FW). I have previously struggled with scanning over Wi-Fi that worked fine up to a point (see here).

A few weeks ago I decided to try scanning via USB. I disabled the network link for the time.

I didn’t work on it for very long but in short I failed to scan anything. Even the Scanner app in Win 10 (I assume by MS though I haven’t checked) failed me... It recognised the scanner but that was it. Preview & scan functions resulted in vague error messages. True, it was the first time ever this MFP was connected via USB so all the “it used to work fine” cards are off the table at the moment and there there may have been a configuration problem of some kind.

As printing via cable wasn’t a priority at the time, I didn’t pay much attention to this which means I cannot rule out a driver problem or something along those lines although I consider this unlikely. Be that as it may, the few attempts at printing that I made were a failure. There was basic communication (status reporting) between the printer and the PC but that was it. Printing as such failed at first.

I did discover though, that a test page sent from the computer was printed if the printer was restarted after having been sent the job. I tried this many times so it wasn’t a coincidence. Like I said, I wasn’t too worried about printing at the time as I had so far had no problems printing over the network. Unfortunately, this no longer seems to be the case.

I cannot say for sure whether the experiment described above has anything to do with what happened next but here’s where things stand now:

I gave up on the scanner, removed the cable and recently got to trying to print something. The printer is connected to the network, I can access the admin panel over http... Everything seems great, but no computers in the network seem to be able to print anything anymore. The most odd thing about it all is the fact that I cannot even make the printer print a supplies report or the built in demo page. It is just stuck at “Printing...”. As for whether the “Cancel” button has an effect in such a situation I am not sure at the moment. I can get to the “Cancelling...” message but I have no idea if I’ve ever gotten past this.

I considered the possibility that perhaps something had happened to the printer itself. Yet, it turns out that I can use the copier as much as I like. I get clear and well printed copies. What to make of all this?

By making copies I’ve established that the printer as such works, and I have every reason to believe that a supplies report has nothing to do with the network or any computer. In other words, something is very wrong. Any thoughts are welcome.

PS the printer is currently using a third party imaging unit. It has worked fine so far and there’s currently about 10% of the potential left. Theoretically an old imaging unit can stop the printer but

a) if that was the case I’d expect the error light to be red constantly. It is blinking at the moment (just because the unit has reached the set threshold)

b) the printer is currently not set to stop because of an old imaging unit (there’s a setting in the admin panel)

c) if it had indeed stopped I couldn’t probably print the copies either

d) the stopping limit is certainly below 10%. Perhaps at 0.

[submarine8 · Accepted solution]

Finally got to trying a solution that someone suggested a while ago. I tried the good old reset trick and it worked. There's an option in the admin panel for initialising network settings, which is what I used

Even the scanner now works as expected. I was somewhat sceptical due to the aforementioned problems regarding printing reports & demo pages but apparently I shouldn't have been. And reconfiguring wasn't as time consuming as I feared.

PS Having now disabled some protocols I have no need for, I see no difference with the configuration I had before. However, there may well be a detail I am yet to notice.

As for the purpose of t4net, it is a bit vague. It may have to do with scanning though, as I understand.

I realised I  had disabled this at some point, which may perhaps explain the failures regarding scanning? However, I tried enabling this before the reset and this alone didn't seem to do the trick then.